Friday, 26 February 2010

You may or may not be aware of the banter and information exchange that goes on on Twitter. I do think it detracts greatly from blogging, but sometimes a good subject comes up. It is in the Title above and was prompted by a comment from Mark Dredge about "great Scottish breweries" and my retort that while there are some good ones, there aren't any that are great. Barry chipped in too asking what defines a great brewery. These are great questions in a chicken and egg sort of way. "Does great beer come from great breweries?" " Can a brewery be great, yet not produce "great" beers?" " Are beers the point not breweries?" "What's the definition of great?"

I don't think I'm going to answer this completely, but there are one or two things that should be included in the definition of "great" in this context. My list isn't definitive. The beer must be very good and consistently so. There should be wide recognition of the brewery's place in brewing lore. The recognition should be across the range and whatever they brew. But it is difficult. Does Duvel become a great brewery solely because of Duvel, while the rest of the range is merely very good. Does innovation and tradition have anything to do with it? I'd argue Paulaner is a great brewery, but they don't brew a single great beer. Is Brew Dog a great brewery because of innovation? Is Marble because of a great range? You see how difficult this is?

Or is it just down to great beers? I really don't know the answer, but I'll be interested in others take on the subject.

PS: Even contenders from greatness have off nights. I wasn't at all impressed with Marble beers in the MA last night.

15 comments:

It's an interesting idea and there should be some interesting comments. A few messages later we mentioned semantics, and that's important. Twitter, because of the 140 character limit, is necessarily short. Me saying that Scotland has a few great breweries worth checking out is not to label them as some of the best breweries in the world, it's to name a few worth seeking out - Orkney, Harviestoun, Fyne, Cairngorm, Williams, etc. And if I say Orval, for example, is a great beer, others can easily disagree as it's a personal thing.

Whether they are all 'great breweries', I don't know, but they make some great beers, which is good enough for me. I agreed with Barry's comment about great beer rather than great breweries because I think you need to consider a brewery by their beer and nothing else. What makes Paulaner a great brewery if their beers are not great? Could the same be said for Budweiser? I agree that some recognition of their place in brewing lore is important, but that's something which is hard to define in the moment. I guess the fact that we know about the breweries and are talking about them is enough to give them a place for now?

Marble has great brewers who make great beers but are they are great brewery yet? This can get into a whole philosophical discussion... I guess it's easy to say that a brewery is great (it's a casual thing, like saying that film was great, or I had a great dinner), and easy to say why (I enjoy the beer), but it's harder to define what a great brewery actually is or what it should be (the same as describing a great restaurant, which won't appeal to everyone and will have some dishes which aren't to everyone's tastes, even the biggest fans).

Blah, blah, blah. This isn't directed at Herr'man, but who really cares?? I brew some of the best beers in the world on my fucking patio. They'd make a preacher lay his bible down! Great beer can come from anywhere. Great is also subjective. One mans greatness is another mans lout.

"Marble has great brewers who make great beers but are they are great brewery yet?"

After being set up by one of the greatest brewers the UK has ever seen (Mark wasn't old enough to drink then!) and having brewed consistently excellent beers for the last 12 years or so (and I've been keeping check..!) I think they are.

I don't think it is entirely. Some brewers can brew and some can't, that's a fact of life, and I'm not on about personal preference here - I'm on about being able to create excellent recipes, brew consistently and well and suchlike; some people just can't do this!

Agreed, personal taste matters to the person, but quality over-rides personal taste in that a good brewer is a good brewer regardless whether you like 'em or not.

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A bit of a CV. Tandleman is a veteran beer lover, local CAMRA Chairman and activist, beer writer, beer reviewer and pursuer of all things good in beer. He lives in the North West of England and London. Despite his CAMRA membership, he does not limit himself to cask conditioned beer, though he believes that cask conditioning, when done correctly and appropriately, brings a quality to beer that is hard to equal by any other kind of presentation. He is a strong supporter of Northern methods of beer dispense and avidly detests poorly presented beer and dislikes pasteurisation. He regularly visits Germany, has conducted corporate British and German beer tastings for CAMRA at the Great British Beer Festival where he has worked for years on Biere Sans Frontieres and was Deputy Organiser at CAMRA's very successful National Winter Ales Festival in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 and at the Manchester Beer and Cider Festival from 2013 to date. He admires good brewers wherever they are and has travelled extensively in pursuit of good beer to drink.

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